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eilidh-eternal · 2 months

Text

You learn the truth

Part of the Metanoia series | Part 1 | Masterlist | Ao3 |

Thank you @gemmahale for reading this monstrosity and helping me fine-tune it <3

“Sergeant. How copy?”

Simon looms over Johnny in the team room, sidled up to a sagging couch that’s seen better days, and when he lifts his derelict gaze from the battle-worn photo in his hands he’s met with pinched brows, sloped granite, and folded arms. Worry, in the staid manner he’s come to expect from Simon.

“Solid, Lt,” he answers dutifully, devoid of his usual ebullience, and with a tenor forged from damascus and flint.

Simon rounds with a languid gait to the opposite cushion, stained with something dark, iron-rich and oxidizing in the loose weave, and lowers himself down beside him. Holds out a gloved hand. Johnny obeys his silent command and relinquishes what might just be the most valuable thing he owns. Deposits it gingerly in his waiting palm.

“How’s she doin’?” he asks, smoothing out a crease in the portrait.

“Started school this past year. Whole head taller than last ye saw her. Still carries that damn bear ‘round the house, too.” Takes his tea the same as Simon, according to Isobel.

“Better that than the bloody mask.”

“Aye. Better, that,” he agrees, and a ragged breath saws out of his lungs when he sinks back into the sun-bleached nylon.

“And your pet?” Simon passes the photo back and Johnny tucks it reverently back into his breast pocket, folded neatly and pressed close to his heart—where it belongs.

“Isnae ‘mine’,” he drawls, somnolence roughening his voice despite the afternoon sun pouring in through the concrete window. “Stubborn thing, too. Hasnae been answerin’ her phone.”

“That what’s got you mithered?”

“Worried,” Johnny corrects, and Simon folds his hands across his midsection, settling back alongside him with a throaty grunt and the echo of artillery fire in his bones, popping and cracking beneath the weight of his battle-worn body.

“All the same, innit?”

“Not with her. Not when she…” He toys with a clip on a canvas belt loop, rough fingers tracing the burnished amalgam of iron and carbon, and for a moment, he feels your skin. Metallic beneath his touch, chilled by the wind, precious and perfect in his hands. “You an’ her are cut from the same cloth. Dinnae care much for sharin’.” Even when you should.

You keep him up at night, itinerant thoughts always finding their way through the morass of post-operative lassitude back to you. Wondering what you fill your days with. If you still linger by the window in the placid hours of the morning with a steaming, ceramic mug warming your hands, marking the passage of time by the melting of the ice. If the final snow of spring has laced the wild cherry trees along the row with pearl-drop blossoms and an almond sillage. If you’ve seen the picture he managed to take from the ramp mid-flight, on transport to Laswell’s station, mareel lea of clouds undulating beneath a star-flecked velarium.

Thinking about all the things he said, and the things he didn’t, before he left. Burning with the memory of you, pressed flush against him; soft and warm and safe in the lambent halo of his arms. You felt like his in that moment, and he lies awake, breathing in char and soot from the moreish conflagration ravaging his chest, staining his throat a fuliginous shade of black with each serrated exhale.

He might have told Simon—if the big bastard weren’t rattling the ballistic glass in his sleep.

You’re standing in the pasta aisle, staring at the selection of boxed macaroni, and you’re drifting further and further into an endless, atramentous night.

Funny, you think, when the sun and stars live next door. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. None of it was supposed to be this way. Stars don't fall from the sky. But meteors do. And now… now you have to crawl out of the crater at the bottom of a pitiless ocean, navigate the upheaval of silt and abysmal detritus, and search for the surface without the gilded hand of the sun to guide you.

You should have stayed away.

Isobel would choose the box with the cartoonish bear. Johnny would make a joke about bears liking porridge, not cheesy noodles. You toss it in your basket with the rest of your ready meals, soggy cardboard already weeping condensation, and battle the undertow to the queue at the till.

You should have left them alone.

“Beautiful day, today is.” They don't know that the stars have gone nova. That the ossified remains of the Earth creak and settle in the brumal gloaming, caliginous and desolate. They can’t hear you, pounding on the ice, desperate for apricity in a nuclear winter.

Now you’re the one who’s alone.

“It is,” you lie, and the effluvium of ozone burns your lungs. Cauterizes the hemorrhaging, pulpy mess you call a heart, languishing in the frangible cage of your ribs.

Free divers can hold their breath for 10 minutes at a time. You wonder how long you’ll last trapped beneath a frozen mantle.

It snowed again, the morning Johnny left—pillowed the earth in anticipation of your fall—but several weeks of sleet and freezing rain has turned the pavement into a patchwork of slush and ice that mimics the glacial floes in your veins. Your wellies don’t have the same grip as proper snow boots. Crampons are better suited for the climb ahead. Neither are very practical for a quick trip to Tesco, though. Would look quite odd, standing on ice cleats in the pasta aisle.

The same can’t be said of the car park. With your canvas tote clutched close to your side, you pick your way through fissures of lingering snow. Opt for trickling streams of runoff rather than attempting to balance on the slick pavement. It’s slow going. Tedious. The lingering wind of last week's squall whips at your exposed skin. Lashes and bites, pumping a gelid venom into your veins, and the blackening, gangrenous bits of your mangled heart feel numb. Numb enough that you don’t immediately recognize the car parked next to yours. Twin sets of eyes, stratified ice, rich with moraine, watching from the windows. You don’t realize how the world suddenly feels too bright, staring up through a polynya, until you glimpse an aureate complexion and charcoal hair, silver-streaked with ash and tied up in a loose pony, emerging from the driver's seat.

Fenella MacTavish is a star in her own right. Has a gravity to her that demands to be felt and heard. The pull of your name on her lips drags you through the hole in the ice and dangles you there. Bait for something bigger. Hungrier. And she does it all with a friendly face, a cordon of coronal light woven into a beaming smile—aimed at the fallstreak hole that’s been punched through your sternum.

“Ye’re a fair way from home, lass.” The divisional line of the Baltic and North Sea, from the feel of it. Or maybe somewhere off the coast of Shetland. It doesn’t really matter. Dread still percolates down your spine and you blink against the sudden shock of the sun emerging from the clouds, lurid rays burrowing into your retinas.

“Better prices for produce on this side of town,” you hedge, and she looks pointedly at the sharp protrusions of box corners against canvas, faultline of her brow erupting with skepticism.

“Thought Tesco’s all have the same prices, more or less,” she reasons, and you watch the way she leans against the D pillar, arms folded and braced against a hiemal wind that tousles loose strands of hair about her face. A similar image of Johnny from several weeks ago effervesces to the surface of your memory and you shove it down. Drown it in the brine that spumes on roiling white caps.

You answer with an indolent shrug and make to step around her, slipping your hand in a fleece-lined coat pocket in search of your keys, but like the other MacTavishes you’ve come to know, Fenella has a propensity for prying questions.

“Have ye heard from Joh—”

“No,” you say before she can speak his name, gloved fingers curling around the worn canvas strap across your shoulder like it’s a lifeline. Trying to pull yourself away from the hole in the ice, procellous waves lapping hungrily at your feet where she dangles you from artfully strung words. It’s not technically a lie. Even if there’s a novel's worth of texts from him that have gone unopened and unanswered. “I have—”

“Come have dinner wi’ us,” she volleys back. Guts the wretched desiderium curled at the back of your throat, backed into a corner and hissing at anything that comes near. Coaxes the dolorous, indignant want festering in your chest into the light.

You want Johnny and his ribald jokes. Want him to look at you the way he looks at Isobel when they walk together. To hold your hand inside the pocket of his coat when you both forget your gloves on the way to pick her up from school. Remind you to leave work at the door. Shut your laptop and close the manuscript. Give yourself a break and come watch some mind rotting show with him and Isobel on the couch. Curl up in a tartan blanket, woven with his family's colors, and pretend you aren't falling asleep with your cheek pressed to his shoulder. Want to bake with Isobel and chase Johnny from the kitchen. Read to her on the nights he’s away, out at the pub on Main with friends from work. Be there, sleeping on the couch with Isobel, waiting for him to come home from assignment.

You want, and the teratoid it’s become circles with the porbeagles. Has teeth and a consciousness all it’s own, shredding through sinewy trepidation and tearing through every layer of adamantine flesh that you wear like armor. Stripping you down to the bone and sucking on the treacly marrow.

There’s no reason why you can’t. Johnny’s said as much. Made it patently clear when he all but tucked you into his jacket with him and let the warmth of sun-chapped lips bleed into your algid skin that night on your stoop. But there’s a picture in the livingroom of the townhouse next to yours that clamors each time you pass it. A ghost, bound to this plane by molecules of ink on photo paper, materializing at your back and whispering words of doubt from the umbrage. Telling you to leave. They aren’t yours to have.

You feel rime creeping up your legs, briny sea spray turning denim stiff in the darkening carpark. The sun is sinking, varicolored sky unfurling against the plumage of clouds and an austere snowscape, and it casts shadows across the city, long as the list of reasons you shouldn’t.

“Tomorrow night,” she presses, “roads ‘round here get a tad dodgy after dark wi’ the ice an’ all.” Her eyes drift to the ice surrounding your feet. Stare for a moment, like there are memories trapped there.

You’ve found your keys. Found them several minutes ago, and have been toying with pressing the panic button. Manufacturing some way out of this conversation. Your toes are numb, too. Whether it’s from standing in a river of runoff or Fenella’s snare, swaying precariously and staring down into the gaping maw of repressed desire, you don’t know. But you do know that you can’t stay here. Can’t keep staring at this woman who looks like Johnny and pretend you don’t want to know everything about her. Him. Them. That you don’t want to go to dinner with her and Isobel because you miss them.

“Tomorrow,” you begin, “I have a meeting. Have to stay late.”

“Tomorrow’s Friday,” she counters. “Bell stays up late to watch Still Game wi’ me. Sure she wouldnae mind waitin’ an hour tae have a friend join us fer some stovies.” You can see Isobel in the car behind her, twisted around in her car seat to watch the two of you, and your heart lurches in your chest. Gnashes and snarls at the web of lies you’ve woven around it, glittering trip wires disguised as a safety net.

Don’t get too close. Don’t get attached. They’re not yours. This will never be your family.

‘Go!’ it wails, and her eyes beg you to stay.

When you finally find your footing again, you take a step towards your car. “I’ll think about it.” Move carefully between cracks in the ice. “See if I can get the meeting moved up. Isobel should keep to her schedule.” Keep your eyes up. Don’t look at the monster she’s dragged out of you.

Fenella nods like you’ve agreed. Either chooses to ignore your feeble attempt at a polite refusal or twists your words into reluctant acceptance as she fishes her phone from her vest. Hums as she taps away at the screen, and you feel the echo of it when your own phone vibrates in your pocket beside your keys.

“We’ll see ye tomorrow night, then.” She smiles, wide and machiavellian, before she severs the snare and watches you plummet. Slips into the warmth of her car as you plunge through the hole in the ice and it freezes over once more. Chum in the water.

Staring at Fenella’s address on your phone screen effects a sinking feeling in your stomach. Drags you down to that abyss again, only this time, you aren’t alone. You weren’t alone before—not really. You’d just denied the truth of what was clawing its way through your chest. Couldn’t face what its existence means.

You stare until the screen goes dark, and then stare some more, until the oven timer chimes and you wade through your kitchen to silence it. Produce a hot pad from an adjacent drawer to pull a cardboard tray of lasagne from the rack, and nearly drop it when the chiming starts again.

Your phone vibrates on the table behind you, Johnny’s name lit up across the screen. Calling.

‘Won’t be able to use my phone a lot, but I’ll call when I can.’

The awful thing in your chest shudders in answer.

Every muscle in your body tenses. Aches to open the line. Grab it with both hands and pull. Drag yourself from the depths of your self inflicted misery and bathe in the ardent warmth of his smile. You want to talk to him. Want to hear that gravel rich timbre and your name rolling off the escarpment of his tongue.

But should you?

Should you even try to be something you aren’t? Something you never thought you could be. Would want to be. Should you—?

“Bonnie? Ye there?”

Oh, fuck…

“Yeah… I’m here,” you breathe, and it’s not salt water but kerosene that fills your lungs. Burns with self-loathing and penitence as it commingles with ozone. “Johnny, I—” Your voice pitches, teeters on the precipice of trepidation and want, and crumbles away with the marl.

You’ve been ignoring him. Ignoring how you feel. Absconding yourself in your abnegation and rotting on the ocean floor, too afraid to swim. To look for the light. Afraid of falling even further.

And all of that want comes pouring out of you now. Out of the hole punched through your chest when he left. In a briny deluge down the berm of your cheeks when he shushes you. From puncture wounds, perfect impressions of serrated teeth, sunk to the bone. Not letting go.

“I know, sweet girl. I know,” he soothes, palliating and emollient, but the breath you take scrapes against your throat, coarse with sand and silt. “I miss you.”

“I miss you too, Johnny.” You thought it would hurt, admitting it. That the jaws would clamp down and you would scream and kick and fight. You were so heavy, full to the brim with want, that you mistook it for that leaden, sinking feeling. Thought it was drowning you.

“Bell said she saw ye today. That ye’re goin’ to visit her tomorrow?” There’s hope in his voice, nestled in the colluvium that tumbles from his lips and settles at your feet.

“Yeah,” you decide then and there. “I am.”

The MacTavish home isn’t what you thought it would be, limewashed stone tucked at the end of a winding, gravel lane, cradled by the tussock and sedge of a heathland and perched on the slope of a shallow vale. Double paned windows cast a genial glow onto the drifts around it, tenuous peaks capped in flakes of gold, and a scintillant lamp floods the walkway, salted cobble, free of the ice your tires struggled to navigate on the narrow streets of Old Kilpatrick. The door is a bathic blue, nearly the same depth as the lacuna between stars on a moonless night, and a boar-head knocker greets you, impeccably polished silver despite its exposure to the elements. Your hand halts halfway to the ring that dangles from gleaming ivory tusks and hangs surprised between yourself and the refulgent star across the threshold. Everything about Fenella and her home is bright.

She ushers you inside, pulling you by a handful of billowing cashmere into the foyer, and promptly defoliates you of the flailing garment and congruent scarf wound around your neck, taking your bag and hanging it from a brass hook beside your coat. “Bell, come an’ look who’s here!” she calls down the passageway, and a brontide reverberates through the hardwood and soles of your shoes. A storm rattling the foliage of a coppice in the thick of Summer.

Isobel shrieks, effusive in the manner of her excitement, when she rounds the corner from the doorway to the left and catches sight of you, teddy forgotten and swiftly discarded in favor of launching herself down the wide hall. You rock back when she connects with your leg, sinking her hands into layers of chiffon, pleated at your waist and cascading to the buckles of your flats around your ankles.

“Ye made it!” She wears a t-shirt many sizes too big, sleeves billowing around her and the hem rolled and tucked up inside with a knot that presses against your shin. The cracked, peeling numerals 141 are barely visible, on her left side just below her breastbone, and her surname is printed just below, peaks and plateau of the M and T rising above the cloud of your skirt bunched up in her arms. Her hair is loose, curls tumbling just over her shoulders in an unruly race to the wide crew-collar of her shirt, and the smile she beams up at you is blinding. Disorienting. Burrowing into your brain in search of a home. Looking for its carbon copy, etched in a memory of Johnny, sitting on a wooden chair in a kitchen that mirrors yours.

A timer chimes, echoing off smooth plaster painted with a whisper of green, sage and seafoam, and an eclectic collection of frames maps a rich family history from the front door down the length of the passageway,

“That’ll be dinner,” Fenella announces, a hand coming to rest between your shoulders and another delving into her granddaughter's curls. “Bell, show ‘er where tae wash up.” She herds you both forward, and your stomach knots with budding nerves.

“Can I help with anything? Setting the table?” you offer, attempt to make yourself useful, and she tuts her disapproval.

“Nae, jus’ wash up wi’ Bell. Dinner’ll be on the table when yer done.” She slips by the two of you, disappearing down the passageway and to the right while Isobel fits her hand into yours and leads you through the door she came from.

There’s a sideboard adjacent to the washroom, and while Isobel scrubs the days mire from her nails you cast your attention to the portraiture above it. Echoes of a convivial home, filled with family during the holidays, outings in the city, and school portraits. Johnny’s service portrait hangs front and center above a shadow box, pin board nearly full with brassy medals and gaudy ribbons. Years younger and clean shaven, he looks boyish and bright-eyed, even with the army drab and neutral expression. But there's a familiar tilt to his mouth, permanently skewed in an inveterate smile, and a whisper of laughter in the gentle slope of his shoulders, not yet filled out with the corded muscle that’s become so familiar. Several inches to the right and many years later, he appears as you know him now. Dark shadow of stubble, interrupted by the stitchwork that created the twisting scar on his chin, and—

The bulk of his body is curled around a young woman, dark cloud of curls concealing her face, buried in the hollow space beneath his jaw, but the swell of her belly is obvious in her profile. Isobel’s mum.

“Yer turn!” Isobel lilts from behind you, but you remain rooted to the polished hardwood, staring at a ghost, and wait for the rebuttal.

They aren’t yours. This isn’t your family.

Budding nerves blossom in the loamy pit of your stomach, creeping along spiculated vines towards the moldering gaps between your ribs, and your heart stutters in its crumbling cage alongside the starving, pacing creature you call want.

Forget them. Leave.

You wait, and wait, and wait—and it never comes. The ink doesn't wail, the frames don’t rattle, and there is no voice whispering over your shoulder.

There is a darling girl, tugging at the fabric of your skirt and the mess of snarled threads around your heart, picking apart the tangled web you’ve been lost in, and she guides you through the fray to the washroom basin.

“Ah spoke wi’ Johnny this morn’,” Fenella begins, reaching across the table to wipe at the broth dribbling down Isobel’s chin. “Said ye finally had a chance tae talk.”

“Oh. Yes, we did.” You don’t tell her how Johnny did most of the talking, took your sniveled apologies for avoiding his messages and buried them in the colluvium. Caught you, from a world away, and lowered you gently to the earth when you fell apart in your kitchen. “He sounds well.”

“Aye, he does. Havnae heard ‘im like that since Kirsten died.” She leans back in her chair, half-finished bowl of stew all but forgotten. “Those two… och, they were a right pain in my arse. Where one went the other followed, an’ made twice the trouble for their Mam.”

The revelation glues to your brain, tenebrous and viscid.

“Has he told ye about ‘er, his sister?”

“She saw the picture in the passageway,” Isobel chimes in, babbling around a mouthful of roast potato.

Their Mam. The picture in the hall. Johnny’s sister. The ghost next door.

“He’s mentioned her once before.” You drag your spoon through cooling beef and potato, breaking up the congealed, starchy mass, and try to do the same with the memories that tangle themselves together in your head. “He told me about his wife; that she passed two years ago. I— He never said his sister passed as well. I’m so—”

“His wife?” Quicksilver brows fly towards the inky peak of her hairline, bewilderment etched in the incredulous slash of her mouth, lips drawn tight. “Johnny’s ne’er wed, lass.”

Your hand stills but your heart rattles, throwing itself against baleen bars, and the pinpricks of teeth, gnawing at the fallstreak hole in your sternum, threatens to crack your ribs open at the dinner table. “Isobel’s mother—”

“Is his sister,” Fenella finishes for you.

“Then, Johnny… Why didn’t Isobel’s father raise her?”

Fenella casts a furtive glance in Isobels direction and finds cordierite eyes staring back at her over an empty bowl, gleaming with a startling discernment. “Stay here,” she motions towards you, and plucks Isobel from the chair between you, balancing her on a broad hip. “All done, Bell? Let’s get ye settled in the den, hm? With Ghost?” Isobel clutches at her shirt for balance, dips her chin in agreement, and Fenella takes her from the dining room, leaving you alone with the savage things in your chest.

Sister. Never married. Niece.

It percolates through gray matter. Drips from the roof of your mouth, nauseating and saccharine, and when you swallow you feel the drop in your stomach like an iron weight. Wilted petals and desiccated vines withering. A febrile joy laced with bile bubbling up your throat; sickly cocktail of absolution and compunction.

There was never a ghost trapped in a picture frame. No headstone inscribed with the MacTavish name and the words ‘Loving Wife and Mother.’ Every poisonous word whispered in your ear came from the devil on your shoulder, sowing demurral and rooting it in reproval, and the roaring in your chest, thundering pulse in your ears, screams yes.

The muted playing of fanfare from the TV cuts through the cacophony in your head, and Fenella’s voice allays the discordance. “She knows more than she lets on.” A sigh filters through her nose with a ‘hum’ and she slides into the chair Isobel occupied previously. “She misses him. Misses him like a wean misses their Da.” Misses him the same as her Mum. Gone somewhere she can’t follow, a place kept secret from her, with no way to know when he’ll be back. If he’ll come back.

The unpleasant realization of that very real possibility scrapes down your spine, whetted talons screeching against corrugated bone.

“Johnny’s the closest thing Bell’s ever had tae a Da,” she elucidates. “They used tae work together, ‘fore Johnny joined up wi’ the Task Force. Passed selection the same year.”

“She—Kirsten—met him through Johnny?” She nods, smiling, but the curve of her mouth has a mournful edge.

“She did. Johnny brought some lads round for Hogmanay one year. Took his sister out wi’ ‘em tae the pubs. Said she took one look at Aaron MacAndrew handin’ ‘er brother his own arse at darts and knew she’d marry ‘im. Did so, the following year. Hardly made it another ‘fore she told us she was havin’ Bell.” The memory of her daughter brightens Fenella’s eyes. Bottled lightning, bouncing off maldivian blue glass. “We were all excited. ‘Specially Johnny; couldnae wait tae meet his niece. Brought home gifts for Kirsten and the wean from every tour and couldnae go to ASDA wi’out buyin’ another teddy or romper.”

“Did Johnny and Aaron tour together?” She nods solemnly.

“Few weeks after Kirsten had Bell they left. Got their orders a month earlier, an’ Aaron… He didnae let Johnny tell Kirstin ‘til after she had the wean. Didnae want her tae stress.

“They were tae be gone three months, so Kirsten stayed here an’ I helped wi’ Bell. Went a while ‘fore we heard anythin’ from Johnny. Said things got hairy. Had tae go dark. Stay hidden. We didnae know why ‘til he called again an’ said he was comin’ home early, but naw Aaron. Naw ‘til he was the only one tae come off the plane.”

Laughter trickles in from the den, pooling in the hollow silence that yawns between you and Fenella. “I…” you try, but every word you string together with the next frays around the knot in your throat.

“She was angry wi’ him for some time. Aaron had died weeks before he called, an’ he kept it from ‘er. Didnae want tae tell her on the phone. Wanted tae be there when she found out.” She shifts her weight in the chair. Leans forward to fold one arm over the other on the table. “Johnny took it hard, too. Losin’ his mate an’ then his sister. None of us saw her for the better part of a year after he died, an’ Johnny took the blame for it. She wouldnae see him. Didnae come ‘round for holidays. He thought if he made ‘imself scarce she might come out her shell, so when he heard from a Captain he used tae serve under, ‘bout the Task Force an’ the longer assignments that came wi’ it… He packed ‘imself up an’ off he went. Was another year ‘fore they finally saw one another. Never knew what was said between the two of ‘em, but they were close as ever afterwards. Right up ‘til she passed.”

“And she listed Johnny as Isobel's next of kin.” Fenella nods, bottled lightning limned with a silvery tide. “I… I’m so sorry. About Kirsten, Aaron, bringing it up— I shouldn’t—”

Despite the tears tracking down her cheeks, Fenella shakes her head. Smiles, and reaches across the table to clasp your hand in hers. “Ye dinna need tae apologize, lass. I should be thankin’ ye, really.” You try to pull away but her hand tightens around yours.

“Thank me? I haven’t—”

“Done anythin’? Lass, ye’ve done more than ye know. He talks about ye. Every time we go tae lunch. It’s ye, an’ Bell, an’ how excited she always is tae see ye. How he thinks she might fancy ye even more than he does. And he smiles. You brought that back.”

And fuck, if that isn’t everything you hoped for. To know that he smiles for you. Because of you. It alchemizes the iron in your stomach to lead, bathed in acid and leeching an acrimonious guilt into your bloodstream.

You ignored him.

Pulled away, just like his sister did.

And Fenella is thanking you.

Midnight settles over the MacTavish home in a mantle of crushed velvet and embroidered stars. Fenella insisted that you stay after dinner. Spend some time with Isobel in the den.

That was several hours ago.

Curled in the corner of a chenille couch, you sit with Isobel pressed to your side, head pillowed by the masked bear she clutches in her sleep.

“Someone’s finally tuckered out,” you muse, brushing an errant curl away from her face. “I should head home. Let the two of you rest.” Fenella stands from her chair beside the couch and maneuvers around the coffee table in the dim light of the TV.

“It’s late,” she rebukes. “I’ll naw have ye out at this hour. Stay the night. Ye can take yer rest in Johnny’s old room.” Fenella croons as she peels Isobel out of her cocoon of blankets and hoists her up into the cradle of her arms. “C’mon Bell, let’s show the lass where she’s stayin’ the night.”

“The roads really aren’t that bad, I— I should be able to make the drive just fine,” you insist, but the admonition in the gaze she levels you with quashes any further argument.

You follow, albeit hesitantly, from the den up a narrow flight of stairs, and hope that she can’t hear the tremulous rattling of your breath behind her. She deposits Isobel, teddy and all, in a colorful room, shelves overflowing with picture books and bins piled high with teddies and toys, tucks her snug beneath a hand-sewn quilt and leaves her with a peck on the cheek to guide you into the room across from hers.

She rifles through a chest of drawers, scratched pine and chipped lacquer, stood up against the wall opposite a wrought iron bed, draped in purples and greens that bring thistle to mind. “Ye can wear some of Johnny’s old things. I’d give ye somethin’ of mine but, well… I think ye’d be more comfortable in this.” Tracksuit bottoms and a pullover. She leaves it on the bed as she moves to where you hover near the doorway. “Washroom is just down there, on the right,” she directs, pointing to the far end of the hall. “An’ I’m just across the way if ye need anythin’. See ye at breakfast.”

With you and Isobel settled in your respective rooms, she ambles off to her own, door clicking shut softly behind her, and you’re left staring at Johnny’s clothes. On Johnny’s bed. In the bedroom where he grew up. Wondering how—if at all—you’ll be able to sleep tonight.

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